Removing parquet flooring

[C. Massey]

I am trying to remove wood parquet floor tiles. They have been glued down with a dark gray glue onto a concrete subfloor. I bought a "floor chisel" at Home Depot and am using a 3 or 5 lb sledge. Some of the floor is coming up ok, but most of it is breaking into pieces and just not wanting to cooperate.

Also, some of the concrete is sticking to the tiles leaving chucks out of the floor. Deepest one is maybe 1/8" deep and the largest one maybe 2"-3" in diameter. I will be putting a wood laminate floor down. Will I need to patch the missing chunks? If so, using what? Redi-Mix concrete?

Any advice on making this task easier will be appreciated! :)

Now I need to get my wife to rub some Ben-Gay on my back. It's killin' me!

Thanks...

Chuck

[louie]

Having recently taken up nine layers of various types of flooring (yes that's NINE layers of wood, ceramic, vinyl, and linoleum in various combinations) in my recently purchased house, I feel your pain. What worked for me was borrowing a tool from my boss that he had purchased for removing shingles. It's a steel bar about 4 ft long, with a flat blade on one end and a handle on the other, it weighs probably about 35 or 40 lbs. Basically, once an edge was exposed under the floor, just slam this under the floor and pry up, pull back, repeat. It was heavy enough to chop through any nails that got in the way. The floor still broke into pieces as it came up, but it was much faster.

You do need a uniform, relatively flat surface for the laminate flooring to sit on, so yes you will need to repair the holes. Floor leveling compound should work, redi-mix should be ok, but is probably overkill unless you just happen to already have some on hand.

In your situation, if the parquet wasn't too thick and you have adequate ceiling height, I would consider leaving the parquet and laying the new floor over the top of it. The only problem might be if the parquet was uneven. If you have the head room to spare, you could also put down some luan to even out the floor before putting in the new laminate.

[C. Massey]

In researching the NG before I asked my question, I saw a similar suggestion, but they were dealing with vinyl tile instead of the parquet. I may see if I can find one to use. I have about half of the floor up, but it's killing me!

Also, everything that I have read says not to lay laminate down over the parquet.

Thanks for your reply...

[SQLit]

Last time I went to ACE hardware, they rent tools. They had an electric floor stripper. You might look into one of those.

[C. Massey]

Well, after 3 days, I finally got it up. I am now taking a break before I start the new floor.

I ended up buying a tile scraper. It really didn't work as well as the floor chisel, so I kept going with the chisel, then came back and got the pieces that where still stuck with the scraper.

I will be glad when my vacation is over so I can go back to work and get some rest!